Panic Fest 2025: Fréwaka seeps Irish folklore into a nightmare situation for caregiver and caretaker(s)

Frewaka. // Courtesy Panic Fest

The Panic Fest horror/genre film festival is currently running in KC for its 2025 season at Screenland Armour. These film reviews are from indie and studio horror/comedy/sci-fi features premiering right now in the Northland, or hitting major theaters/VOD soon. Catch up with all our coverage here and there’s still time to get tickets for individual screenings at the Panic Fest 2025 website.

When a film starts out with a wedding reception that’s crashed by cult-like members with wicker hats covering their faces and a goat adorned with flowers, you know things won’t end well. Aislinn Clarke’s Fréwaka lets you know what road its headed down from the opening moments, giving way to a tale of Irish folklore that strikes the balance between culturally familiar and frightfully reimagined twists.

When Shoo (Clare Monnelly) first appears on-screen, she’s at her lowest and most vulnerable. Accompanied by her pregnant fiancé, Mila (Alexandra Burstryzhicka), Shoo has to clean up her recently passed mother’s flat, so the landlord can put it up for rent. As if that wasn’t heavy enough, she receives a sudden message from her day job as a care worker, calling her away for an assignment to a remote Irish village.

Shoo senses something is amiss when she lands at a house on the outskirts of town. Not only is her patient, Peig (Brid Ni Neachtain), defiant in the belief that she isn’t crazy, but the scars on her back and incessant creaking of something in the night back up her claim. It doesn’t help that the townsfolk are all doom and gloom concerning Shoo’s presence. It doesn’t matter if she speaks the language or is there to help, she’s merely seen as an outsider. As the days bleed on, her patience is tested not only by Peig’s antics but also by Mila’s package of her mother’s keepsakes she sends to the house unannounced.

Clarke sets up the early interactions between the ladies with an adversarial tone. Peig pesters and tests Shoo’s patience. She’s standoffish, mean, and basically petulant—the kind of patient that would make any care worker question their career prospects. It’s a battle of wills as Shoo stands her ground, determined to help this old lady, even if logic and circumstances suggest otherwise.

After witnessing Shoo break down in front of her, Peig lets her mask slip a little. “If you aren’t careful, they’ll take us both,” she says without a hint of deception. “Birth, marriage, death. Those are the thin places.”

Frewaka. // Courtesy Panic Fest

Sensing they have more in common, Peig shares her sad story. On the night of her wedding, she was taken away by the Sidhe, Irish folk figures. Her husband bartered with forces he didn’t understand to get her back, but something went wrong. A mistake that’s led her to take extreme measures to protect herself. And a game that Shoo now finds herself drawn into, as strange dreams start to plague her, along with the feeling that no one is who they seem, beyond the walls of the house.

It just takes a while to get to the place where the stakes are entirely laid bare.

What it lacks, though, in expediency, the film makes up for with mood and dread. Cinematographer Narayan Van Maele and composer Die Hexen (yes, really) wring every ounce of tension imaginable from each scene while John Murphy’s editing keeps shifting things ever so slightly off-kilter. Given that the film switches between English & Gaelic and is keen not to over-explain every strange occurrence, the right mood is tantamount.

There may be a few quibbles with the pacing and myriad of topics it overloads itself with, but it’s not compelling. Even the ending, which for some may come off as formulaic or predictable, is still effective and filled with a sense of foreboding. That’s a rare feat in and of itself, and for those willing to lose themselves to the siren call of the side,

Fréwaka is well worth your time, and will be available for streaming via Shudder on April 25, 2025.